I’d expect that if the maker undertook a thorough and well-documented search for the rights holder; then just made it anyway, they’d legally be covered
1) It might be hard for the rights holder to assert their copyright at a later stage, if they lack the evidence to do so at the outset
2) any damages awarded might be mitigated by the attempts to search for the rights holder, especially if the ‘true’ owner was contacted at some stage. Seems more likely they’d be compensatory as opposed to punitive
I know this isn’t the prevailing legal practice, but as a lawyer, the lack of a willingness to be bold in these legal situations has always surprised me
Perhaps the tail risk of being slapped down is just too large
I’ve always wondered about a business model of searching for such works, undertaking a bona-fide effort to find the owner, and then just selling it as your own if one can’t be identified. (Perhaps with a war chest kept in reserve for the rare instances licensing fees are demanded later). ‘Copyright squatting’ if you will
>I’d expect that if the maker undertook a thorough and well-documented search for the rights holder; then just made it anyway, they’d legally be covered
In a sane, rational world that would probably be the case. Too bad we don't live on one!
>I’d expect that if the maker undertook a thorough and well-documented search for the rights holder; then just made it anyway, they’d legally be covered
You're an attorney and don't know that copyright infringement is a strict liability offense?
In ‘orphan work’ situations as long as a person had made a good faith effort to locate the copyright owner, and therefore isn’t infringing someone’s copyright wilfully; criminal liability won’t apply. The worst you’ll realistically face is an after the fact civil suit
think there’s a misunderstanding. in my jurisdiction we use the word offence to refer to criminal actions. If the penalty is only civil, then this bolsters the case for being bold toward omens treatment of orphan works
But we are talking about US copyright law - that's what the article is about, and there's no real issue with criminal enforcement of copyright. What jurisdiction are you in? It doesn't bolster anything because in the US copyright infringement is strict liability and civil enforcement of copyright actions are frequent. The greater point anyway was that it's odd for you to offer this legal advice while simultaneously not being aware that copyright infringement is strict liability. Now you are also saying you didn't think about the civil context at all. Bizarre.
OTOH slavery is so morally abhorrent that it far outweighs any positive contributions a person might make in their lifetime. I think its good that society condemns it in the strongest possible manner, including by renaming
I can understand that others won't feel the same way I do.
Would you then support renaming the Washington monument? Removing any mention of his name from history books, or taking him off of our money? Should we take "Washington Crossing the Delaware" down from the walls of The Met and burn it?
I don't think that the bad things someone does should cause us to pretend that the good things never happened. We should see people for who they were, the good and the bad, even if in the end there was more of one than the other.
It might even be that the worse someone was, the more important it is that we shouldn't forget the good things. It helps remind us that everyone has the capacity for (and a history of) acts both good and evil and that even those who have done terrible things that could never be "made up for" (if that's ever even possible) are/were still capable of making the choice to do something wonderful.
Well, Washington was our first president, so he can get away with that. If chapters of the Audubon society want to rename themselves, I say let them. The living shouldn't be beholden to the dead. It's nothing but a name at this point Also he and Audubon weren't really known for upholding the cause of slavery. I think Mount Blue Sky (formerly Evans) is an example of something that ran the opposite direction. We all agreed it was better off not to commemorate a disgraced territorial governor.
> I think Mount Blue Sky (formerly Evans) is an example of something that ran the opposite direction. We all agreed it was better off not to commemorate a disgraced territorial governor.
Yeah, I don't have any problem with that one either. I'm not even sure what, if any, connection he had to the mountain. It's not like John Evans was super into mountains and inspired generations of others to get really into the enjoyment/study/preservation of mountains. It's really not clear what naming it after him was for exactly.
Changing the name of a landmark or a species may require thoughtful consideration but not an organization. Companies change names all the time and a bad name drags an org doing good work down. Why should employees have to come to work in the name of someone who doesn’t deserve it in the light of history.
It is “good that society condemns it in the strongest possible manner” and ideally never does it again. But the problem of this absolutist black-and-white view is that you’re missing a lot of details and nuance. Someone can be both good and bad, in fact all of us are. Everyone deserves to be commended for their good actions and vilified for their bad ones.
The other problem is when this all-or-nothing way of thinking escapes this kind of narrow case and seeps into the common public discourse, see the way politics are evolving in way too many western countries.
That said, renaming birds named after obscure figures is generally a good thing, descriptive names are more useful and don’t require knowledge of the historical background to make sense.
I mean, half the country thought it was fine so you can automatically remove monuments to anyone who lived in the south and some parts of the north from 1619 to 1865. And yes I know only a small percentage owned slaves but that's because they were expensive not because no one else wanted to.
When it comes to monuments it's important to consider what it is they are honoring. We can keep monuments that celebrate the amazing acts of otherwise flawed people, but (as an example) I think that those monuments by the UDC which were created to glorify people because they fought for the right to keep slaves is something very different.
I'm not okay with the idea of destroying those kinds of statues and monuments, they are still artistic and cultural works after all, but they are probably best left to be displayed in civil war and civil rights museums where they can be contextualized appropriately.
> You know what would be better than some mythical museum of context? Melting that garbage down
Do you think civil war/rights museums are mythical? I promise you that there are several and if you've never seen one you should really make the time. I'll warn you though that they are filled with many things you'd find extremely distasteful which is exactly how they should be.
Ugly as it is, it's our history. A group of KKK loving racists put monuments to their heroes up all over the place including state capitol buildings and courthouses and some remained for over a century. That actually happened.
Current and future generations should be able to see those monuments with their own eyes, the same way that they should be able to visit Auschwitz or the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. We need to confront our history and learn from it, not just erase the parts that make us uncomfortable. It would be wrong to take away that opportunity by destroying all evidence of the shameful things in humanity's past.
Where is the line drawn? AFAICT we just outsourced slavery, which is equally abhorrent. We all own electronics, clothes, and other trinkets made under duress, and knowingly. Should we all be denigrated and forgotten for turning a blind eye?
Audubon was born into a world where slavery was considered a perfectly normal part of life and widely practiced. We don't have that excuse. We're supposed to know better than this. We just try to forget about the slaves that made our iphones and give a pass to the corporations responsible.
Renaming is probably counterproductive as many view erasing history with suspicion. We could more agree to actually fight slavery today, as there are more today than in years past.
This is trolling, right? You think there’s a meaningful moral differences between whether the constituency for keeping more people locked up for longer are government employees or private sector companies?
Ideas have never been the scope of copyright and it wasn’t in its democratic mandate. If creatives want that change, fine, advocate for a change of the law
This isn't about ideas, it's about a specific individuals work given that the reproduced text lifts literal characters out of Martin's book. That has always been covered by IP law. Canonical example, you cannot write a novel about Harry Potter, you can write a book about a wizard going to a magical school.
If a model generates large amounts of text that is very close to something you've written, because there isn't much else like it, how is that "inspired"? It needs more dilution.
We would have to change the law to allow the kind of ‘inspiration’ you are talking about, which is why there are multiple lawsuits here. That’s what OpenAI is asking for - redefinition of ‘fair use’. NNs aren’t copying ideas, they train on what copyright calls ‘fixation’ - they deal with text, audio, and pixels, not ideas. We keep hoping and looking for understanding in the NNs, but we have ample evidence that they don’t actually understand much, if anything, they are just really good at copying in a way that make understanding seem plausible to the layperson.
What you’re describing requires an ability to copyright style on top of expression. That would be an unacceptable constraint on freedom of speech and artistic freedom in my view
The ability of an industry to turn a profit should not constrain the ability of the general public to communicate ideas. Expression is the only thing that should be copyrighted against
Its more efficient for them to satisfice through obtaining graduates with good signalling factors (good schools) than sort the wheat from the chaff themselves
Ensuring opportunities for working class and marginalised people is an issue that can only be addressed by community or government
> Its more efficient for them to satisfice through obtaining graduates with good signalling factors (good schools) than sort the wheat from the chaff themselves
I find that unconvincing. Aren't progressives constantly talking about how corporations are exploiting workers by paying them less than than their productivity? In other words, each employee makes money for them on net. All things being equal, it's in corporate america's interest to have as big of a workforce as possible, because more employees = more productivity extracted. Even in a situation where corporations aren't labor limited, they'd still benefit from increased competition on the labor supply side driving down prices for them.
"Private equity" refers to large investment funds that typically buy & restructure businesses to increase profitability. It's not simply a generic term for "a business."
Yes it'd be a derivative work owned by Paolini. Paolini would have copyright to the derivative work, to the extent that he has rights over derivative material. However, the prompter would have nothing
If I write a poem and put it into Stable Diffusion, how is what is produced not a derivative work of my poem? We can argue that it's a derivative work of many other things, but that doesn't make it not a derivative work of the poem.
One way it might not be is if Stable Diffusion is seem more like a hash algorithm than a synonymiser. But I don't see why it should, because there's a meaningful correspondence between the input and the output of the system.
1) It might be hard for the rights holder to assert their copyright at a later stage, if they lack the evidence to do so at the outset 2) any damages awarded might be mitigated by the attempts to search for the rights holder, especially if the ‘true’ owner was contacted at some stage. Seems more likely they’d be compensatory as opposed to punitive
I know this isn’t the prevailing legal practice, but as a lawyer, the lack of a willingness to be bold in these legal situations has always surprised me
Perhaps the tail risk of being slapped down is just too large
I’ve always wondered about a business model of searching for such works, undertaking a bona-fide effort to find the owner, and then just selling it as your own if one can’t be identified. (Perhaps with a war chest kept in reserve for the rare instances licensing fees are demanded later). ‘Copyright squatting’ if you will